A.‘Drama’ is an ancient Dorian word meaning ‘doing’ or ‘action’.
Drama is a mode of literary and performance expression that works through action (praxis), not narration as in the other
forms of poetry: epic (like Homer’s Odyssey)
and lyric (like the choral odes in Oedipus
Rex).

Drama is more closely related to ritual than the other poetic
modes. Action or plot is at the heart of its purpose. You should think
of action not simply as special effects spectacles, like in a space explosion movie. Instead, the plot of the story
drives the action. A good plot has fascinating twists and turns, sudden
surprises and, hopefully, an ending that devastates you. That’s pretty hard
to pull off, especially if everyone in the audience already knows the story, as was
the case in Oedipus Rex.

Aristotle, the great Athenian philosopher,
defined action as a movement of the spirit through a whole
community. You know what that means if you have been in the audience at
the end of a terrific play or movie. In a great work
of art action moves to a catharsis, a moment of sympathy mixed with
terror, what Aristotle defines as the simultaneous evocation of pity and
fear.

B.Religion of Dionysus: Drama, and in particular the art form of tragedy,
grew out of the worship of the god Dionysus. His cult spread throughout
the Mediterranean during the eighth or ninth centuries BCE with the
cultivation of the grape and the discovery of its intoxicating
properties when distilled into wine. Over time, the drunken and bloody
sacrifices which climaxed the Dionysian revels evolved into dramatic
plays. Instead of enacting the mysterious union of sex and death, the
plays would contemplate the mystery of human suffering.

Other
religions also had festivals, contests, sacrifices, processions and music,
but the religion of Dionysus had certain peculiarities that gave rise to the
art form of drama.

1)The cult became
popular in Greece after Homer (8th. c. BCE), so the epic and lyric forms of poetry had
fully formed and could thus be used in drama.

2)Dionysus’
story, as you have learned, is very diversified in
content. There are many stories to tell. The dithyramb or hymn to Dionysus could take many forms. (Dithyramb literally means ‘double
birth’ or ‘resurrection’.)

3)The religion
was ecstatic in nature. The celebrants believed that wine infuses mortals
with the spirit of the god in a form of possession. They believed that they
were changed into the thiasus or sacred herd of Dionysus. The thiasus
would dance, dressed in masks and skins and tails, to the sound of flutes,
clappers and drums. The men were transformed into satyrs, the
women into bacchaeor maenads.
Here we have the beginning of the art of acting: the practice of representing
someone or something other than oneself,

Tragedy:

Tragos
literally means ‘goat’. One who dressed up and performed as a follower of
Dionysus in the herd of Dionysus became known as a tragedian. Tragedy literally means ‘goat-song’.
That is a pretty grim idea when you realize that first human, then animal
sacrifices climaxed the celebration of the Dionysian revels. Eating the flesh
of the goat and wearing its skin allowed the participant to become the animal
itself. In its origins, tragedy enacted this bloody, intoxicated rite. The teaching of Dionysus was experienced
not learned.
There was no study of a sacred text, no guidance from a priest.
Dionysus’ wisdom was communicated through participation in the ecstatic
experience, through direct union with the divine. In the Dionysiam
revel, the participant literally became the god: Orphism was a feature of many
ancient religions: “Thou shalt be a god, not a
mortal.”

Attic Tragedy

During
the centuries after Homer’s great epics were written, the bloody rituals of
the Dionysian revels evolved into the high art form of Attic Tragedy. The great
tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides developed out of a religion
featuring ritual ceremonies which enacted the myths of Dionysus. Eventually, intoxication and sacrifice
ceased to play a part in the actual performance, but tragedy remained a
sacred ritual enacted to conjure the spirit of the god Dionysus himself, and
blood is still shed, even if symbolically, at the end of every tragedy.

The
form of Attic tragedy developed from the dithyramb: a spectacle involving singing, dancing, music and
poetry combined, like a half-time spectacle at a football game. The exarchontes
(leaders of the dithyramb) were the
poets who wrote the hymns to Dionysus and the choreographers who led the
satyr dances that accompanied these songs. A typical performance enacted the
story of Dionysus crossing the sea, taken prisoner by pirates, and then freed
by the satyrs. The pirates are thrown into the sea and transformed into
dolphins. Then the satyrs rejoice with Dionysus as he arrives in
Greece- just as he does each spring.

The
festival of Dionysus at Athens became the site for theatrical innovations
that created the art form of tragedy. In the sixth century BC an exarchonte
named Thespis separated a performer from the thiasus, or chorus, of singers
and dancers. Thespis named this performer the hypocrites (answerer). His function was to engage in dialogue
with the chorus leader. These dialogues took place between the song and dance
numbers and eventually developed into little scenes or epeisodion. In essence,
Thespis had invented the modern actor as we know it; he had also invented the
art of playwriting.

In
534 BC Thespis brought his traveling troupe of performers to Athens to
participate in the local Festival of Dionysus held on the Acropolis. You can
imagine the procession: a float on which stands a huge statue of Dionysus is
drawn by a herd of flute playing satyrs and bacchae to the holy precinct
where performances take place. Eventually, this flat site next to a hill
became the site of the great Theatre of Dionysus that stands to this day on
the Acropolis. Thespis’ avant-garde innovation, interspersing scenes of
dialogue in between the great choral dithyrambs,
caught on quickly, and within the next fifty years, Aeschylus and Sophocles
had refined tragedy into a timeless art form. It all happened that quickly!

Why
is dialogue such an essential component of tragedy? Why not just stick to the
ecstatic songs and dances and the spectacular special scenic effects (like
the pirate attack)? The answer goes to the heart of what tragedy is all
about. First, the early playwrights discovered that plot entertains an
audience in the most powerful way. The spectacle of a character in motion
toward a terrible climax transfixes an audience. Dialogue advances the action
of tragedy towards a great moment: a revelation about the truth of its
central character. The truth revealed by catharsis is deeply ironic. That ironic truth reveals the
nature of what it means to be human in our mysterious and violent world.

Tragedy
looks at the deepest and most disturbing facts of human life and discovers in
them mysterious double meanings. Why must we die? Why are humans capable of
inflicting such cruelty on one another? Are we in control of our fates or
have they been written for us by the gods who personify the immutable facts
of life? Where can we find justice in the world? The heroes of Greek tragedy
are endowed with our best qualities: intelligence, strength, courage,
perseverance and dedication to principle (or honor). They are placed in
situations beyond the limits of their understanding or control. Their pride
is stripped from them, and the true nature of humanity is exposed.

Typically,
the climax of a tragedy is terrifying and horrible; blood is always shed at
the moment of catharsis. However, there is another equally important aspect
of catharsis that cannot be separated
from the horror: awe at an insight achieved into the truth. Tragedy is deeply
ironic. It celebrates the facts of life and allows the actors and audience to
participate open-eyed in the horror and splendor of existence.

Tragedy
is a ritual in honor of the great god Dionysus. As in the earliest ecstatic
ceremonies, the revels of tragedy climax with blood, but the spilling of the
blood nourishes the earth and makes the approaching harvest possible. At the
climax of Oedipus Rex, when Oedipus enters blinded and bloody, yet
finally in possession of the truth, we too participate in catharsis, and for a moment, we
too become like gods, fully alive.

Aeschylus and Sophocles

Three
of the four greatest tragedians of all time were contemporaries, living in Athens,
competing in Dionysian drama festivals. Only Shakespeare surpassed their
artistic achievement.

Aeschylus (525-456 BC) was a general
at Marathon, the great victory of the Greeks over the Persians that ushered
in the golden age of Athens. His greatest cycle of tragedies, The Oresteia,
tells a story familiar to you from Homer. Remember the greeting Agamemnon got
when he returned home from Troy? In Homer, it was Clytemnestra’s lover Aegisthus who murdered him. In Aeschylus’ version of the
myth, Agamemnon, it is Clytemnestra
herself who does the dirty deed. She has a strong motivation for murdering
her husband: vengeance. Agamemnon had sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia to
free the Greek fleet from off shore winds so that the Achaean warriors could
sail for Troy. Clytemnestra waited ten long years to avenge her daughter’s
death.

In the second part of the trilogy, Orestes,
the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra returns home and meets with his sister
Electra. When Orestes finds out about the murder of his father, this brother
and sister plot vengeance against their mother. Orestes has no problem
killing Aegisthus, but the prospect of taking his
mother’s life torments him. After a great confrontation with her, Orestes does
the dirty deed and is immediately assailed by three supernatural ghouls, the
Furies, who pursue him and torture him as he wanders aimlessly about the
earth.

In the final play of the trilogy, The
Eumenides, Orestes arrives in Athens still
suffering from the Furies who will not allow him to forgive himself for the
murder of his mother. Orestes pleads his case before Athena herself. He
claims that he has been taught by his suffering and misery that no crime,
even his mother’s, even his own, is beyond atonement.
The Furies accuse Orestes, but he claims that he has been cleansed of his
guilt. Athena accepts his plea and persuades the Furies to forgive him as
well. With this new law of mercy established (and the precedent of the
justice of legal trial not blood vengeance), Athena transforms the Furies into
the Eumenides, protectors of all suppliants. The
cycle of vengeance has been broken.

In
Aeschylus’ tragic vision, a profound religious experience subsumes human evil
and Orestes’ terrible fate. Compare this catharsis
to the one that occurs at the end of Oedipus Rex. Aeschylus was the
true creator of Greek tragedy. He elevated the theatre from its origins in
satyr dances and orgiastic rituals into a profound philosophical experience
without losing the ecstatic impact of the ritual’s cathartic experience. He
joined thought and emotion into a profound ceremonial experience.

Aeschylus’
introduced a second actor into the action to join Thespis’ hypokrites.
Consequently, dialogue developed much more freely and became the central
focus of the action. He reduced the size of the chorus and began to withdraw
it from the center of the spectacle.

Sophocles (496-406 BC) built on
Aeschylus’ model (a far easier job than Aeschylus’ feat of creating an art
form from a pagan tradition.) Sophocles competed with Aeschylus in several
festivals and won the prize in 468 BC.

His
career spanned the period of Athens’ greatest political and cultural
achievements. He was a friend of Pericles, Herodotus and Phidias; he served
as Treasurer in the government and as a general in the Peloponnesian Wars. He
was one of the three commissioners who governed Athens after she was defeated
by Sparta and as the great golden age of Athens drew to a close.

Sophocles
wrote Oedipus Rex in 425 BC after
Athens had been defeated in war and while plague was raging in the city. The
great Athenian experiment in democracy was drawing to an inglorious end.

In
his plays, Sophocles introduced a third actor and reduced the chorus even
further in size (to twelve). This innovation forced the hero to shoulder an
even greater burden of the action. The hero’s response to a destiny
determined by the gods becomes the focus of the action.

Sophocles
created the five-act play. The great philosopher Aristotle saw Oedipus Rex and declared the play the
model tragedy in his Poetics.
Nearly two thousand years later, during the Renaissance in Europe, Oedipus Rex remained the model
tragedy. Shakespeare studied the Classics, and he wrote his great tragedies
in response to Aeschylus and Sophocles.